The Long Awaited Founding Conference of Momentum Will Be a Virtual Conference!

In his farewell speech to
the House of Commons Tony Benn repeated
one of his most famous sayings concerning democracy and accountability. It is particularly relevant at the present
time given Jon Lansman’s coup against Momentum’s membership.

‘In the course
of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a
powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five
questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose
interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get
rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not
live in a democratic system.’

These are
the questions we should be asking of Jon Lansman and those on the Steering
Committee who voted with him –does your power derive, to whom are you
accountable and most importantly how do Momentum members rid themselves of your
misleadership?

Jackie Walker - removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum by Jon Lansman and friends despite the overwhelming opposition of Momentum members and branches

On the
evening of October 27, Jon Lansman, the sole director of ‘Jeremy for Labour’
company (renamed from Momentum Campaign Ltd in the summer), called an emergency
meeting of the Momentum Steering Committee for the evening of October 28 – i.e.,
with 19 hours’ notice. Some members, such as Matt Wrack and Jackie Walker, were
not able to attend at such short notice.
The meeting decided, by six votes to three, to cancel the November 5
meeting of the National Committee which was scheduled to take decisions on the
organisation of Momentum’s founding conference in February 2017.

It was
the February National Committee meeting which elected the Steering Committee
for the following six months, i.e. up to August. Therefore what has happened is that Momentum’s
Steering Committee, alowerbody,
has just voted to disallow thehigherbody
from meeting! Clearly constitutional
theory is not Lansman’s forte!

It also
decided that the first Momentum conference should be in the ethernet, a virtual
reality conference. It would have no
physical manifestation. There would be
no meeting hall, no delegates, no debates, just an atomised membership who would vote on the different proposals put
before them. And who would decide the
structures that allow such a vote? Well
you guessed it. The same Jon Lansman and
his coterie who have decided that, come what may, they can’t be removed. Hence why Momentum’s Companies are in the
sole name of Lansman, who is sole director.

Since the
National Committee elected the Steering Committee it is unconstitutional for
the latter body to effectively abolish the body which elected it. It recalls the famous poem"Die Lösung"
(The Solution) of Bertold Brecht after the workers’
uprising in East Berlin in 1953:

After the uprising of June 17th

The Secretary of the Authors' Union

Had leaflets distributed in the
Stalinallee

Which said that the people

Had forfeited the government's
confidence

And could only win it back

By redoubled labour. Wouldn't it

Be simpler in that case if the
government

Dissolved the people and

Elected another?

In an
email issued by Momentum to ‘key people’ “in local groups the decision was
justified by the fact that “some Momentum
members, groups and regional network meetings had raised concerns about the
organisation of the 5 November National Committee meeting, the process leading
up to it and democratic representation and participation for Momentum members
more broadly”. We are not told who
these people are nor what were their concerns were. Still less were we told whether they had
called for the NC not to meet.

If it is true
that people had concerns about the November NC then this is entirely the fault of the
self-same committee that is now shutting down our democracy altogether. This body gave branches and
regional committees almost no time to meet and discuss proposals for the
conference or to choose delegates for the November 5 meeting. In fact, most
members have not even seen the various proposals on the future of Momentum and
how the conference might be run.

One member, one vote

Lansman also
pushed through a motion which stipulates that the conference must be organised
via a system of “online voting for all members” – the full 20,000 of them! The
merits or otherwise of the various forms of representation for the conference
was to be decided by the November 5 National Committee which has now been conveniently
cancelled.

An
excited email sent to all members on 29th October from Momentum
centrally informs us that, “Over the coming
months, members will propose their ideas on Momentum’s aims, ethics, and
structure. We will use digital technology to ensure that all members can be
involved and shape Momentum’s future.”

This is
the veryoppositeof
democracy. It is designed to atomise individual members and undermine
conference as the collective decision-making body of Momentum. It underlines the
extent to which sections of the left have internalised the defeats of the past
decades. It is Thatcher’s union ‘reforms’
writ large.

To add to
the confusion, it is unclear precisely what Lansman and his allies are actually
proposing. Jill Mountfordtakes a guessthat
“it seems what they mean is that
delegates to Momentum conference will not take any decisions but votes will
instead be taken by an online ballot of all members afterwards. This is bizarrely reminiscent of Blairism,
bureaucratic manipulation veiled in plebiscitary pseudo-democracy.”

This is
worse than anything Tony Blair managed to foist on the Labour Party. How can we
ever again gripe about the bowdlerising of Labour Party conference democracy if
we acquiesce to the travesty that Jon Lansman and his cohorts are trying to foist
on to us?

We are
still in the dark as to how motions might be proposed to conference. Theoriginal Lansman planrequired
an initial 50 signatures for a motion to progress further. After several more
hurdles had been vaulted, 1000 signatures would be required for a motion to be
heard by conference. Many branches and regional committees have criticised
this, calling for the threshold to be lowered. It is very likely that the
National Committee meeting of November 5 would have overturned restrictive
stipulations like these and challenged many more of the plans of Lansman and
co.

Clearly
it is much better to just stop the NC from meeting at all! On 29th October I received the
following email, as did other Momentum
members. It is a classic example
of deception dressed up in the language of false bravado. I omit the final flowery paragraph:

Dear Tony,

Momentum has had a big first year. We’ve
established over 150 local groups across the UK, run national campaigns, formed
the backbone of Jeremy’s incredible second leadership campaign - and now we
have over 20,000 members.

Momentum helps the Labour Party to become a more
open, democratic and campaigns-focused organisation. We need to be member-led
ourselves. You must decide the future of your organisation.

Yesterday, Momentum’s Steering Committee voted to
start the process of ensuring that Momentum becomes a truly democratic
member-led organisation, reflecting the new kind of politics.

Over the coming months, members will propose their
ideas on Momentum’s aims, ethics, and structure. We will use digital technology
to ensure that all members can be involved and shape Momentum’s future. This
process will culminate in our first national conference, with online voting for
all members, in February.

In solidarity,

Team Momentum

It is a classic in
Orwellian hyperbole and double think. It
talks about a member led organisation when the proposals from the SC are
designed to achieve the exact opposite.
The decision of the SC to distribute the arguments of those opposed to
these proposals were conveniently overturned as Lansman fondly imagines that if
he doesn’t distribute them people won’t oppose know about them! Dictators far more intelligent than Lansman
have harboured similar illusions!
Momentum groups are up in arms, not only about this but the removal of
Jackie Walker as Vice-Chair.

The last 48 hours have seen all hell break lose in
Momentum. It is essential that Momentum
members and branches hurry messages and resolutions into Momentum centre to
condemn this latest attempt to shut down democracy in the organisation.

At
the heart of what has happened lies a deep, morbid distrust of the members and
democracy. As SC member Jill Mountford put it in herreport: “Sam Wheeler and Jon Lansman spent far too much time arguing that local
groups and the regional committees were undemocratic and unrepresentative.”

Momentum
branches are forbidden to send emails to all Momentum members in their area.
All communications must be routed through Momentum nationally, presumably so
the content can be vetted.

·Momentum branches have been told not to bring their members
together in constituencies and wards to work to maximise their political impact
in these geographical units of the party. This makes it very hard to
effectively cohere the Labour left in these locales. The official reason for
this restriction is that the Labour Party does not allow the affiliation of
organisations with a ‘mirror' structure, as the rule book dubs it. But then,
Momentum is not affiliated to the Labour Party, it is not a party. Its members
should be working together in cohesive units, sharing experiences and
discussing in their democratic local forums the direction of their national
organisation.

·Apart from sending out insipid campaigning news, the Momentum
leadership does not communicate with its members. There are no minutes, no
reports, no agendas of the organisation’s committees.Some“key
contacts”, as they are dubbed, insome
branchessometimesreceivea
littleinformation.
A few of these comrades forward this intel to some other people some of the
time. In effect this has helped to create local cliques that monopolise key
information. The vast majority of Momentum membership have no idea of who runs
their organisation, what decisions they take and how.

Momentum’s claim to
represent some sort of clean “new kind of
politics” is starting to look very much like the old type of politics –
decisions taken before meetings have
even convened, a disregard of basic constitutional principles, an existing clique
trying to preserve its own power. In
fact the behaviour of Jon Lansman, Sam
Tarry and co. seems to resemble nothing so much as the behaviour of Iain
McNicol and Tom Watson. They are the
very antithesis of democratic socialism.

The London Momentum regional committee on October 29
voted by 31 to 0 (with 2 abstentions) for the following motion. For a Report see here

This meeting of the London
Momentum Regional Committee censures the National Steering Committee for
cancelling the meeting of the National Committee that was scheduled for 5 November
and agreeing a method of organising the national conference without waiting for
the National Committee to discuss it.

We do not recognise the
legitimacy of the Steering Committee to make these decisions. We call for these
decisions of the National Steering Committee to be rescinded and for the NC to
proceed as originally scheduled on 5 November.

2) The Labour Representation Committee:

LRC national
conference passed this resolution at its October 29 conference:

LRC AGM condemns the
decision of yesterday's Momentum SC to cancel the scheduled NC for 5th November
and its decision to abandon a delegate conference in February.

3) Model motion from Labour Party Marxists:

This meeting condemns the
decision by a hastily convened emergency meeting of the Momentum Steering
Committee on October 28 to cancel the November 5 meeting of the National
Committee. This NC was scheduled to decide the organisational details of our
first national conference in February 2017.

Important decisions on the
future of Momentum should involve as many members as possible. Six people on
the national Steering Committee (a body that was supposed to be re-elected in
August 2016) have decided to stop branches and regional committees to have
their say on the future of our organisation.

We call for the National
Committee meeting, re-arranged for December 10, to go ahead. It must discuss
and make decisions on all issues pertaining to the organisation of our
conference, including voting arrangements, delegate credentials and ratios, the
future composition of the National Committee, etc.

Jill Mountford who is a member of the Momentum Steering Committee
has blogged
on what happened at the meeting of 28th October because of course
Lansman and co. would not dream of distributing minutes or a report of the
meeting.

I must confess to being surprised by the vote of Christine Shawcroft who is
part of the split in Labour Briefing.
She voted for the removal of Jackie Walker as vice-chair of Momentum but
I took that to be because of bad blood
between the groups. This vote is
inexplicable.

Another member of the Momentum
Steering Committee, Michael Chessum, explains
his vote against Lansman’s proposals.

‘What do you call it when an executive
votes to abolish the legislature?...

Momentum's steering committee met tonight in a
meeting that was called with less than a day's notice, ostensibly to consider
delaying the National Committee meeting which was due to meet on November 5th.
I went to the meeting prepared to oppose the move (it's already 6 months since
our democratic structures met) and expected to find myself in a minority. The
NC was due to discuss (among other things) the composition and processes for
Momentum's February conference, which would in turn decide our structures. In
advance of it, local groups and regions had patchily met to discuss various
proposals.

But my initial concerns were blown out of the
water. Instead, the meeting not only voted to postpone the NC to December, but
to bypass the NC entirely and make the decision that Momentum's conference
should effectively not happen (instead being a live streamed national
gathering), and momentum's structures decided by e-ballot. This was in a
meeting called with 19 hours notice.

A lot of this was justified with an attitude
of "it can't possibly be
undemocratic to let all members vote, so pack up your deliberative structures
and democratically agreed processes". Now I don't know about anyone
else who's been around the Labour movement for more than 5 minutes, but I've
heard that strain of logic before - and i dont mean from the left.

Now even if you think that literally all of
the organisation's decisions should be taken by OMOV (personally I favour a
mixed system with both OMOV and delegate meetings; but I can quite see how with
a complex conference structures debate you might want a delegate debate rather
than an atomized online vote), but whatever your view, this is just an
outrageous, farcical way for that decision to be made.

Momentum is fantastic - and
so are many of the people who frankly found themselves on the wrong side on
this - but I really worry about the left sometimes, and how some bits of it
have absorbed the modus operandi of blairism during the wilderness years.

Jackie
Walker has also issued a statement:

"I am making a statement on
the working of the Momentum Steering Committee.

Up till now,
despite others commenting freely, and often in an uninformed way, I have agreed
to be silent. However, events of the last few days have changed this.

'Almost
immediately after the Jewish Labour Movement began to tweet against me after
the training event, a 'senior member' of Momentum joined in, briefing the
press, in particular a Guardian journalist, Joan Elgot. Interestingly those
tweets have since been removed, though screenshots have been taken. This was
very soon followed by full articles, both in the on-line and paper version,
which said "The Guardian understands
her removal from the post is likely to be confirmed when the committee meets on
Monday. A spokesperson for the left wing grassroots movement, which was set up
to support Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the party, confirmed members wanted her
to go." I was also informed by the Guardian, as were others on the
Steering Committee, at the same time as the Guardian Leadership, the date and
outcome of the meeting to remove me. Included in this same article were
comments by Manuel Cortes, Gen Sec of the TSSA, threatening to remove Momentum
from TSSA premises if I were not removed. This came, I believe, soon after
Cortes had publicly called me a rabid anti-Semite, or something to that effect.

While the press
may have known when the meeting to remove me would be, as well as the result, I
was given only 48 hours notice of the hearing and no details either of how it
would be run or what the charges were against me, despite repeated requests.
The extraordinary spectacle of a group of trades unionist treating a comrade in
a way THEY would not accept had they been representing me as trades unionist
was shameful to our movement. No statement was taken from me or from anyone who
had been at the JLM training event. The irony is the SC used evidence from the
same media sources that had recently condemned Jeremy as an incompetent, an antisemite
and a terrorist.

After this
kangaroo court, I asked for a complaint of this process to be forwarded to the
NC and for an investigation to be launched about the leak. A meeting of the SC
voted against giving me access to the NC. I know who leaked, as do many people
on the SC.

As to the most
recent example of the lack of democracy of the SC, on Thursday at 10:30pm I
received a notification of an emergency SC meeting. There was no mention of a
discussion on how the conference would be run. A number of people could not
make, or would not agree to come to such a meeting. A number of people,
including myself and Matt Wrack, protested as to undemocratic process. Some
members agreed to phoned in. Imagine my shock the next morning at being
informed both that the NC was to be postponed and that the decision had been
made by the SC that conference votes would be made on line. This occurred even
though at least 2 papers were outlining different process of voting at
conference had been tabled for discussion at the (now cancelled) NC.

The sovereign
body is the NC. The SC is there to implement their decisions. This is an
outrage.

The two examples I describe here are just the most well
known of a general culture of disdain which too many members of the SC have
supported. It is crucial that this changes.’